Kick

by Paula Byrne

  Kick knew what was at stake. Billy was showing her all that she would own and be part of if they were to think of a life together. Back at Churchdale Hall, the house near by where Billy and Andrew were brought up (‘a small house but very comfortable’), she talked with Billy ‘for hours every night’.3 He told her that the family was planning to move into the great house at Christmas. He would take rooms at Chatsworth and planned to spend time working in the archives for his undergraduate thesis.

  As her diary faithfully recorded, Kick spent much of her time that winter either with Billy or thinking about him. She sneaked into a church service in his old school, Eton: ‘the most impressive thing in the world with all those boys singing for all their worth’. She undertook some charity volunteering work at a nursery school in the east end of London, though she struggled with the cockney accent: ‘Have great difficulty in understanding anything they say. Imagine they have same with me.’4 The very next morning, ‘after getting away from our most industrious seat of learning’ (the day nursery!), she set off for Newmarket with Janey. They missed two trains but arrived in time for the fourth race and then went over to Cambridge, where they had tea in Billy’s rooms. He ordered them a taxi to the station, which bemused her since outside the College there were three cars belonging to his guests with the chauffeurs sitting idle. They missed the train, returned to College and ended up being driven back to London by one of the chauffeurs.

  As the romance progressed, Kick and Billy’s circle expressed their surprise at the union. They seemed like the strangest of couples. Billy was so tall and refined, so very English. Kick was a bundle of energy, lively and petite – so very Boston Irish. Billy was known to be languid and took things slowly. His mother told a story about how he once declined a cup of coffee because he couldn’t be bothered to drink it.5 Perhaps he inherited his lethargy from the 5th Duke of Devonshire, who once refused to get out of bed when a footman informed him that Chatsworth was on fire. ‘It’s your job to put it out,’ he drawled and went back to sleep. Billy was punctilious about matters sartorial, and was always formally dressed in exquisite tweed and linen suits with a tie, even when he was at a picnic.6 He was so fastidious that once, when forced to share a bedroom with his untidy brother Andrew, he drew a chalk line down the middle of the room to keep the disorder at bay. Kick was messy and had a habit of throwing her clothes in a heap on the floor for someone else to pick up and tidy away.

  The Kennedy brothers, Joe and Jack, were puzzled by their sister’s interest in Billy Hartington. He just didn’t seem to be the right sort of man. He was such a contrast to Kick, who was so lively and so full of energy. He didn’t appear to share the Kennedy sense of humour. Though he had a dry wit, Billy had a tendency to take himself seriously, which was largely due to his deep sense of duty and responsibility as the heir to Chatsworth. He was an intellectual, and it was a long-standing joke between Jack and Kick that though so clever she was no intellectual.

  But Kick saw much in Billy to love and admire. Though earnest and thoughtful, he had not the slightest arrogance. He had a self-deprecating sense of humour, which she relished. His love of history and politics and his gentleness and kindness offered exactly the combination to attract her. She liked Billy precisely because he was a true gentleman and didn’t push too hard. Her parents’ marriage gave out such conflicting signs: she knew that her father was a philanderer and that her mother turned a blind eye. Kick, though sexually charismatic, was shy. But she also took a dim view of male promiscuity, intensified by the behaviour of her father and brothers. At a London dinner party a married man’s affair was gossiped about. ‘That’s what all men do,’ she said. ‘You know that women can never trust them.’7 Other friends recalled that Kick disliked being touched. She particularly frowned on the sort of man who was known in social circles as NSIT (Not Safe in Taxis).

  As for Billy, he was simply mesmerized by Kick, by her energy, her spirit, her dazzling smile and her funniness. Their friends remarked that in her company he seemed more confident and sure of himself. Billy had always worried that women were attracted to him because of his wealth and status, whereas Kick teased him about his aristocratic pedigree: ‘Being a duke is something of a joke, isn’t it? It’s like being a cartoon character, no?’ Billy would laugh out loud, and then catch himself and say, ‘Well, no, not quite a joke.’

  His sisters, Anne and Elizabeth Cavendish, who were devoted to Kick, thought that her teasing irreverence was just what he needed to stop taking himself so seriously. He needed to be laughed at a little: she was Elizabeth Bennet to his Darcy. She would call him at Chatsworth and when the butler answered the phone she would say: ‘Hello, is the King perchance in his castle today?’

  Billy’s cousin Fiona Gore said: ‘It was wonderful to see. Here was this lively American girl who through some odd circumstance had become the toast of the town, and she was paying all this attention to Billy. It gave him such confidence. She swept him off his oh-so-steady feet.’8 For Debo Mitford, the ‘pale English beauties’ who fell at Billy’s feet were no match for Kick’s ‘high spirits, funny American turn of phrase, so like her brother Jack’s, and extreme good nature . . . she was loved by everyone who knew her.’9 She described Billy as ‘a charmer of great intelligence. He had a great presence . . . and he was loved by everybody . . . He and Kick were about the two most popular people you could imagine.’10

  Billy himself compared Kick to a plant whose roots had been pinched tightly to force luxuriant growth and bloom.11 Once he had met her, there was no other girl for him. She was irresistible. As she was falling in love with the England that he embodied, he was falling in love with her as the incarnation of American confidence and hope. She allowed him to begin to believe in himself.

  As the months went on Kick began to feel deeply for Billy. She started collecting newspaper clippings about him, pasting them into her London scrapbook. Again and again her diary records long talks into the night. Billy loved conversation and he was delighted that Kick was passionate about politics. But she kept the news of her romance from Rose, knowing that her mother would regard the religious difference as an absolute impediment.

  Rose was determined that Kick should take some courses at King’s College in London, but they were interested only in girls who wanted to pursue full-time degrees. Joe, meanwhile, was coming under increasing criticism from both the English press and President Roosevelt in Washington. In the weeks following the Munich pact, the President told Kennedy to urge Chamberlain to open discussions with Hitler on the Jewish refugee problem. Kennedy had no intention of doing so, believing that the priority was ‘securing a viable, long-term peace agreement with the dictators, one that would include but not be centered on the rescue of the Jews’.12

  The events of Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) on 9/10 November, in full public view, showed the lengths to which Hitler was prepared to go in his persecution of the Jews. The Times protested: ‘No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults on defenceless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday.’ The brutal excesses horrified the Ambassador: ‘I am hopeful that something can be worked out, but this last drive on the Jews has really made the most ardent hopers for peace very sick at heart.’13 No one was a more ‘ardent hoper for peace’ than he was, but his isolationist views and his vehement anti-war stance were becoming untenable.

  Joe Jr wrote in his diary that his father was ‘tired of his work. He claims that he would give it up in a minute if it wasn’t for the benefits that Jack and I are getting out of it and the things Eunice will get when she comes out next Spring.’14 Joe Sr saw the success that Kick had had that year and was determined that the same should happen with Eunice. What he and Rose still did not know was the extent to which Kick was leading a secret life with Billy. She was dining with him at Claridge’s, the Savoy and her favourite nightclub, the Café de Paris. At the Savoy, she observed tartl
y: ‘All Billy’s relatives sitting about getting an eyeful.’

  Kick was one of the few young people to be invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace in November in honour of King Carol of Romania and his son Prince Michael. Kick described King Carol as ‘rather fat but very gallant’. Prince Michael was ‘good-looking with dimples’. Rumours began to circulate about a romance between the Ambassador’s daughter and Prince Michael. For Kick, this was a good cover for her increasingly serious relationship with Billy.

  The family (except for Jack) was united for Thanksgiving. Then on 9 December Kick was invited to dine with the Devonshires in their London home to celebrate Billy’s coming of age. This was a modest affair: his official party at Chatsworth had been postponed because of the death of his grandfather the previous May. Kick was given the place of honour on Billy’s right-hand side: ‘Rather frightening with the Dowager Duchess and Lord and Lady Harlech giving me dirty looks’. She was glad to escape with Billy to Quaglino’s. Then they went on to the 400 Club where they encountered two of the Devonshires’ footmen ‘singing filthy songs’.15

  On 10 December, Joe Kennedy returned to America. For the Christmas vacation he was planning an extended break in Palm Beach with his friends and Jack, who arrived with Lem Billings and Rip Horton in tow. Jack had taken a semester off from Harvard to serve as Joe’s secretary in London, and would be returning to England after Christmas.

  After a racing day at Sandown, Kick and her friends were involved in a tragic car accident when a cyclist was hit by David Ormsby Gore’s car. The boy, a fifteen-year-old farmhand called Peter Baldock, died three days later. Kick was in another car with Billy and did not witness the accident. She later recorded that David was exonerated, since Baldock had no light on his bicycle. The accident did not seem to stop the party mood: there were ‘Mad games on lawn’ the next day.

  Her relationship with Billy was growing ever deeper. At a party she sat downstairs with him and they talked intimately throughout the evening. She broke a dinner date with another man to go out with Billy and then discovered that one of her friends had told her date, who was upset by her duplicity.

  Her mother now knew that she was seeing Billy, but believed that he was just another of her many suitors. Rose had attended a lunch in which she sat next to Billy’s father, the Duke of Devonshire, noting in her diary: ‘father of Billy Hartingare, one of Kathleen’s beaux of the moment’.16

  A week before Christmas, snow fell. Kick went Christmas shopping with Billy and then they headed to Ciro’s for dinner. There they found Billy’s father having dinner with his mistress, Lady Dufferin. The head waiter came to warn Billy. Kick wrote: ‘it seemed so funny for father & son to be in the same place like that but it didn’t phase Billy at all’.17 The Duke came up to them and asked them if they had seen Billy’s brother Andrew. Presumably because he was only eighteen, the Duke did not want Andrew to see him with his mistress.

  Two days later Kick and her family departed for skiing in St Moritz.

  22

  St Moritz and Rome

  Pray for me.

  The Pope to the Kennedys

  St Moritz was the winter playground for the rich and famous. Rose and eight of her children set off for Switzerland, stopping over in Paris. ‘Whole carriage filled with Kennedys,’ Kick wrote in her diary. The faithful Moores were also in attendance, though Eddie got into a quarrel with a porter, which Kick found hilarious, as the men were arguing in different languages. The family finally arrived at their luxurious hotel, Suvretta House, on Christmas Eve just in time to go to Midnight Mass in the small chapel near by.1 The McDonnells were also joining the party.

  Suvretta House stood among the beautiful mountains of the Ober-Engadine, with stunning views of Lakes Champfer and Silvaplana. The sense of peace and calm was interrupted by family mishaps: Bobby sprained his ankle, Joe Jr hurt his arm tackling one of the steepest slopes at high speed, and Teddy wrenched his knee. As ever, the press couldn’t get enough of the photogenic Kennedy children on the slopes; they were the epitome of health and wholesomeness. On Boxing Day, Rose had a press call with ten photographers. Two days later, she received a telegram from her husband informing her that she had been chosen by the Associated Press as ‘Outstanding woman of the year for selling the world the American family’. The Kennedy family’s place in American cultural lore’ was assured by several jokes about them in Cole Porter’s new Broadway musical, Leave It to Me. The main character and his wife were loosely based on Joe and Rose. At one point in the play, the social-climbing wife asks her husband why she can’t have nine children ‘the way the Kennedys do’. The audience roared when her husband replied, ‘Because I’m tired.’ Jack had made a point of attending the opening night and told Rose: ‘It’s pretty funny and jokes about us get by far the biggest laughs, whatever that signifies.’2 Kick, who adored the music of Cole Porter, was tickled.

  On New Year’s Eve, Rose and the children attended a dinner and a party. Kick noted in her diary that she and Joe Jr skived off mass.3 As the children moved into adulthood, Rose no longer had the control over her brood that she had once had. Skipping mass was one way to rebel.

  In the new year of 1939, Rose wrote to the President, thanking him for the opportunity he had given them. There were rumours circulating in the press that the Kennedys were going home, but Rose squashed them, showing herself the politician’s daughter that she was in her response to the press: ‘We like England and we just love the English. I’ve had some of the happiest times of my life in England. All the children like it too.’4 None more than her daughter Kick, who was finally off the leash and having the time of her life.

  Back in London, Rose began attending art lectures at the Wallace Collection: ‘it won’t be long before Papa will be paying for every picture in Christie’s’, Kick joked.5 Joe Jr had joined the family in London and was teaching Kick to play bridge, which she found ‘quite a struggle’. Rose, worn down by the ‘fogs and gray skies and chill of the English winter’, had left in early 1939 for one of her adventures, a quick shopping trip to Paris and then on to Cannes, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Palestine and Egypt.6 To accompany her she had invited a woman called Marie Bruce, whom she had met at a lunch. Marie was recently widowed and was surprised that Rose had asked her along. She later recalled Rose’s sensitivity and kindness: ‘She is very perceptive to people’s unhappiness and reacts to it, tries to help.’ Marie thought that Joe Jr had inherited this quality, a ‘humanity’ that was ‘astonishing’.7 Marie Bruce would become extremely close to the family and would, in later times, be a surrogate mother for Kick.

  As soon as Kick arrived back in England on 14 January she went off to dine with Billy. She continued to see him throughout January and February, their assignations rendered easier by her mother’s absence. Kick was painfully aware that her father’s conduct was drawing unfavourable comments from her English friends. In February, she wrote to Joe who was taking a long break in Palm Beach: ‘People feel you rather let them down over here & caused a great deal of unnecessary jitters in America by your statement about “war is inevitable”.’8 She was torn between her adoration of her father and her deep loyalty to the English. She had always seen him as politically infallible, as someone whose opinions were always right and prescient. But now the Ambassador was becoming a liability to his children.

  On Valentine’s Day, Kick and Billy attended the wedding of his friend Derek Parker Bowles and Ann de Trafford, the eldest daughter of a millionaire racehorse owner. Billy would later be godfather to their first-born son, Andrew Parker Bowles. Rose wrote to tell her husband that ‘Kick goes out with Billy,’ but she was still not taking the relationship seriously; as far as she was concerned, he was still just one of her many suitors. In the meantime, Kick was excited to hear the news that her beloved Jack was coming back to England.

  Upon arrival, Jack wrote to the ever-faithful Lem: ‘Met the King this morning at Court Levee. It takes place in the morning and you wear tails. The King stands and you go
up and bow. Met Queen Mary and was at tea with Princess Elizabeth, with whom I made a great deal of time.’ He also joked, ‘Thursday night I’m going to Court in my new silk breeches which are cut to my crotch tightly and in which I look mighty attractive.’9 He may have been his usual teasing self with Lem, but he was deeply concerned about the political situation in Europe. He spent hours with Kick’s friends, debating the fallout of the Munich agreement. Billy and his circle were appalled by what they saw as Britain’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia and Chamberlain’s cowardice in not standing up to Hitler. One of Jack’s heroes was Raymond Asquith, son of the then Prime Minister, who had died nobly in the trenches of the First World War. Jack argued that Asquith, a true soldier and gentleman, symbolized a Great Britain long gone, and that the British were now ‘decadent’. Billy disagreed. He would never forget this conversation. Strikingly, Jack and Billy decided to make Munich a subject of their undergraduate studies.10 Both young men had fathers they deeply admired; but both fathers had shown support for Chamberlain and the Munich agreement. This shared disparity drew them together.

  Billy and Kick were inseparable that spring. Kick’s London diary records the dances, the dinners, the races, and always Billy’s name was top of the list, though she rarely allowed herself to write deeply about her feelings for him. Teasing him was the way to his heart. When he took her to a Spanish restaurant she threatened to steal an ashtray as a souvenir (‘good old American custom’), but ‘needless to say it embarrassed the Marquis no end’.11 The most intimate times were when they talked deep into the night: ‘long chat with Billy about life’.12